OPINION – Welcome to the second annual PlayStation Experience, step right up folks! It’s a show for everyone that likes to shit on Xbox one, an event that shows what will the PlayStation 4 have in the future. The games that are supposed to usher in the future… are kind of just from the past.

 

This year’s PlayStation Experience was a mixed bag, with games being announced left and right, but all of those games lacked any impact (Well most of them). Sony is going well above the thirty million mark with their PS4 sales, and will probably continue to soar with those Battlefront bundles; I can’t help but feel that they’re getting too confident.

Confidence is a good thing, but at a certain point if you keep teasing us with the big guns and all you have to show for us is a bunch of hipsters, VIRTUAL REALITY, Uncharted 4 and Final Fantasy VII the Remake you have to wonder what is the point for this event. Don’t get me wrong there were some noteworthy, earth shattering announcements… but those were not coming from big Western developers. In fact, it seems Japan saved the conference for me.

The rain of indies

I don’t have a problem with middleware software; I think some of those games were great back in the PS3/Xbox 360 era. Just look at Saboteur, Dark Sector, Singularity, Wet, Bayonetta, Vanquish, etc. Hell, these might sound as triple AAA titles but sadly could never be counted as one. Sony decided to… open up the show floor with a bit of Uncharted 4, and then suddenly everything crashed to a halt with forcing us to watch the newest (I guess ads) for games that are quite frankly could have been just released on the PC.

While not every indie game was a pixelated shooter or a walking simulator (HELLO FIREWATCH, please go away), the rest were carbon copies of earlier released games such as Alienation, which reminded me of a better looking Helldivers. Not bad, but at the same time I expected something else this year from the indie scene. Still it is really funny trying to play these indie games on a huge TV with a console that has eight cores.

Speaking of cores, after the first six minutes of groundbreaking realistic „cutscene” of Uncharted, Sony decided to speak for a few (10 or so minutes), about how awesome it is PlayStation 4 players get the DLC first for Black Ops 3… Hurray???
P.S.: Some fun moments from Battlefront (DON’T FORGET TO BUY THE SEASON PASS)
The Western Front has fallen .. fall BACK!

As I’m writing this opinion piece about the event, I need to go back and watch tiny parts of the conference just to remember what exactly happened. Not because it was so bad that I wanted to forget about, but because it seems Western developers decided to just not appeal to me. Either that or I was expecting something entirely different.

For instance, we’re going to get Adult Swim games! WOOOH, maybe a Venture Brothers game from Telltale, oh maybe a hack n slash Metalocalypse? Nope, just a bunch of low quality (albeit some fun looking) indieish games. I mean they’re my kind of games due to their absurd nature (Head Lander being a 70s sci-fi parody), but my expectations diminished over the course of this conference after an hour.

Battleborn looked okay (Seems Randy Pitchford does not want to do a new Borderlands game), Don’t Starve Together (YAWN), Fat Princess Adventures…(people actually played that?), and finally… yes, the big man himself… TIIIIMMM SCHHHAAAFFFEEERRR took to the stage to announce something important. Was it going to be Brutal Legend 2 exclusive to the PS4? Maybe a new IP? Naaaah just Day of the Tentacle HD for the PS4 (and of course for the other platforms). Well it can’t get anymore worse can it? Right ?!

Of course, it can, here’re thirty minutes if people waggling a PS move with a funny headset on still trying to claim that „This will be the best way to play new games”. Which is just a way of saying „Please spend a few hundred dollars more for this headset”. Next up! Look at Destiny, the Taken King is getting new content that is.. sparrow racing? Here’re Rachet and Clan remake but with all the naughty humor censored and rewritten, guess they need to be in line with the movie.

The biggest offence… was Sony somehow going in and making Santa Monica studios a pixelated zombie taxi game? If there was ever a point where I went: Hmm maybe Microsoft treats its talents better it was this….The entire conference would have been lackluster if not, for one thing, Japan saving the day so spectacular that I regained some tiny shred of hope.

My god it’s full of actual games

NiOh a Japanese samurai demon game from Team Ninja, then Ni No Kuni sequel, after that we finally get some gameplay footage from Final Fantasy VII which looked great ( the bit laggy but hopefully by the end it will be ironed out). The biggest shock of all was the return of a PlayStation exclusive franchise that wandered off to Xbox a bit, ACE COMBAT!

Yes.. finally the series that always looked beautiful, and had the videogame sound track in the genre. Not much was revealed other than also having VR components, plus it will be even more scifish than the previous Assault Horizon.

There are glaring problems

Still this was only a small portion of the segment and, to be honest, did not hype me up to be a loyal fan of Sony. Sure some of the games looked great and intriguing (Shadow of the Beast, Alienation, Nioh), but I’m starting to feel remake fatigue, and started to wonder what 2016 will bring us other than: Remake, remake, sequel, sequel, HD remake, more PS2 games, and maybe a new exclusive game.

PlayStation 4 is still winning the console race, but the question is what Sony and other third party developers have for the long run because to be honest this marathon is starting to tether on boredom. Now and then Japan pulls the nitro on the console but Sony seems to be confident to live out this generation with massive third party support. The question is though is this enough, and does the software sell well as the console? Time will tell, and let us hope that E3 2016 will be packed with more exclusives.

-Dante-